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Friday, October 22, 2010

About Pesticide Action Network Asia Pacific (PAN AP)

Please watch above videos:
Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific: 18 Years of Empowering People for Change
(Part 1)
Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific: 18 Years of Empowering People for Change
(Part 2)

Pesticide Action Network Asia and the Pacific (PAN AP) is one of the five regional centres of PAN, a global network dedicated to eliminating the harm caused to humans and the environment by pesticides and promoting biodiversity-based ecological agriculture.

Since its inception as an independent organisation, PAN AP has situated itself in the grassroots movements of Asia and as such has gained strength from these linkages.

This could be seen through the success of the People’s Caravan 2004 that provided a mechanism to strengthen the people’s movements, publicise their issues, and unite various movements altogether. It has cut through countries, culture, languages and political ideologies. The interactions with local communities have enriched the solidarity among grassroots organisations and advocacy groups and individuals. Currently, PAN AP has 108 partner groups in the Asia and the Pacific region, and more than 390 PAN AP participants.

The empowerment of women has been a conscious effort within PAN AP staff, its programmes, and its network. It was able to systematically ensure women’s involvement and integrate gender views in various projects and activities. PAN AP fought very hard for equal representation of grassroots women from Asia in various national and global fora. PAN AP has as its core, women’s movements and groups who are strong on gender issues that motivates and directs PAN AP’s work in the region.

Apart from PAN AP’s contribution in strengthening peasants’ and women’s movements, PAN AP’s work has also been continuously recognised in the areas of campaign work that is grassroots-based. This development is seen through the acceleration of the Community Pesticide Action Monitoring or CPAM. Developed as a tool for community documentation of the impact of pesticides on health of communities, this tool has become a method not only to document but also to organise communities to take action against pesticides. The training workshops have also provided the impetus for developing action plans that are now being implemented. PAN AP and its team of facilitators have also progressively improved the training methodology and information documentation so that it is easily adapted to different situations and cultures.

The experiences shared by communities, the local knowledge gained from these interactions and collaborative work within its partner groups have become leverages for PAN AP’s policy advocacy work. PAN AP’s policy advocacy is aimed at influencing government policies and regulations at the national and international levels based on these knowledge and experiences. Its research agenda has provided deeper analysis and perspectives on policy issues. It has a stronger aim of generating and collating information alongside communities and partner groups through participatory approaches. All programmes within PAN AP have integrated this framework.

Overall, PAN AP’s work continues to provide impetus to improve the lives of the marginalised communities. Based on its recent external evaluation, the process provided new learning and renewed perspectives that further affirmed PAN AP’s relevance, effectiveness, and commitment to continue with its work programmes, its campaigns, advocacy, research, training, mobilising, networking and facilitating the strengthening of movements to truly empower communities for change and advance food sovereignty, ecological sustainability and gender justice.

PAN AP would like to thank Humanistisch Instituut voor Ontwikkelingssamenwerking (HIVOS, The Netherlands), Evangelischer Entwicklungsdienst (EED, Germany), and Netherlands Organisation for International Development Cooperation (NOVIB, Netherlands) for their generous support to PAN AP. For more information please visit: www.panap.net